I have an unrooted PRS-T1 in which the memory has apparently become corrupted over time manifested by books that won't open, and I've had to resort to scanning and repairing the memory with Linux disk tools. There are many bad "sectors" that have been marked out as well. Now it's got to a point that the dictionaries don't work at all. When I try to access a dictionary, the unit becomes unresponsive and then I get the force close screen. A few days ago I formatted the internal memory using the internal menu option, and reloaded books via Calibre. My books are all readable again but the dictionary must be completely corrupted. I never touched the "setting" partition of the device, is that where the dictionaries are located? Is there any way to completely reload the default disk image or gold load to the unit?

@mochaiso Your unrooted PRS-T1 has many more partitions other that the READER and Setting partitions you see when you connect it to your PC. The dictionaries are on a separate partition (usually invisible).
If you ran linux tools to check for bad sectors on the reader partition only then you might be able to copy the dictionaries partition from another device. In my experience, marking bad blocks causes problems with the dd command.
Just follow the procedure, modifying it as necessary to copy only the dictionaries partition.

I also have an unrooted T2 which is bogged down with opening a book, the dictionary, etc. but I don't have the skill needed to do "the procedure" so I was wondering what the format option does on the reader? Would that give me a clean start to reload the books I am reading from the desktop software? Would I lose my dictionary etc?

@mochaiso Your unrooted PRS-T1 has many more partitions other that the READER and Setting partitions you see when you connect it to your PC. The dictionaries are on a separate partition (usually invisible).
If you ran linux tools to check for bad sectors on the reader partition only then you might be able to copy the dictionaries partition from another device. In my experience, marking bad blocks causes problems with the dd command.
Just follow the procedure, modifying it as necessary to copy only the dictionaries partition.

I understand what you are saying and I've read through that procedure, but where does one find another device or a partition from one? If I had another device I would just use it and return this one..

I've been playing with it some more. I reloaded the latest firmware and it appears to have had some positive effect. Now I can select words within epubs and the definitions come up at the bottom, but if I go into the dictionary via the home menu button about 4 out of 5 times it just locks up. I can't enter any text via the soft keyboard and then I have to repeatedly press the back arrow and home to get out of it. The Dictionary force close popup eventually shows up. I also noticed that sometimes after it crashes I cannot get back into any book (the reader application locks up) and I have to do a device reset. Do you think if I use the rupor-rescue I can then scan each partition for bad clusters and attempt repair?

Also I do not think the problem is with the dictionary partition but I cannot be sure.

My suggestion is to start by doing a full backup, then format the unit, restore the full backup. Test and see if the problem is still there. If it is, then restore the partition images one by one, just as in my procedure.

So, i fannly decided to try entodays method about restoring a good reader partition. For this, i had to update my reader to the latest version (1.0.05.11130). After doing this, i saw that the reader was no longer rooted, so i gave the dictionary a try and what do you know, it is fixed!

I tried restarting the reader, shutting it down, meking it go to sleep and all the other possible scenarios where people had their reader crash on them and mine works perfectly!

Despite all of this, i still tried to make a backup of my reader in order to restore it if the dictionary fails again (i have only been testing it for an hour or so) but i was not able to find Ubuntu Disks application inside my live usb drive ubuntu. I only found Ubuntu Disks, i could see the partitions inside the reader (showed up as PRX-xxx) but i never saw the two cogs where i was supposed to do the backup. Well at least now its working and i have entodays dictionary partition to try and solve this issue if it ever showd up again.

If you are still having this problem, try updating to the latests version. If you are already in the latests version, try to reinstall the firmware, i guess i saw a post about it somewhere. good luck everybody!

Well, that was fast. After writing this post, i shut down my computer, went to bed and tried using the dictionary. I could select the word, but when i tried to change the dictionary while inside the book, the reader stoped responding.

(btw, i only put the reader to sleep in the time between these posts, and didnt connect it to my computer, nor deleted or added any books).